Teens Like to Read if you let them Read what they Like

Last spring the school which employs me as a librarian, let me radically redesign our summer reading program. It took a bit of doing, but the basic design was -- and continues to be -- founded on the premise that teens will like to read if you let them read what they like. Teachers volunteered to sponsor titles and students were allowed to sign up for whichever teacher/title they wished. If they wanted to not decide -- and read any book they hadn't read before -- they signed up for a group in which everyone had read a different book. Armed with loads of discussion questions, teachers facilitated conversation about the variety of books.

Anyway, it was a resounding success! Sure we had some duds who didn't read anything, but most did. And they read great stuff, too! Here's the list of titles that were selected by teachers, sometimes at the suggestions of some of their students, sometimes based on their own individual book passion.

1984 by George Orwell
Anathem by Neal Stephenson
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Vol. 1: The Pox Party by M.T. Anderson
The Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson
Between a Rock and a Hard Place by Aron Ralston
Black Swan Green by David Mitchell
The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan
Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
The Elfish Gene: Dungeons and Dragons and Growing Up Strange by Mark Barrowcliffe
The Endurance by Alfred Lansing
Godel's Proof by Ernest Nagel
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Hooked by Matt Richtel
The Hot Zone by Richard Preston
I Love You, Beth Cooper by Larry Doyle
In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan
The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
Maus I by Art Spiegelman
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult
The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
Paper Towns by John Green
Petey by Ben Mikaelsen
The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria
The Red Pony by John Steinbeck
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Stardust by Neil Gaiman
The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff
The Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer

I am in the process of making a suggestion list for this year. No one has to stick to it, but providing an annotated list of titles proved very helpful last year. I would welcome any suggestions.